Design Or Read
by CrystalHauntress
Summary: Stella's shut herself away in a world of fashion. Then the Winx decide to get Brandon in on the matter. One-shot.


**A/N: This one-shot is dedicated to TrassDrakin, who said he wanted to see more one-shots from me. Because it's dedicated to him, I'm using his favourite character. Bet you can't guess who it is! ;) And this is after season one.**

Fashion. It was her life. It was all she thought about. Never mind school, exams, studying. All she thought about was fashion. _And_ saving the world. Except the Trix were defeated and it was impossible that they would attack anytime soon.

So she shut herself off from the rest of the world and concentrated on her dress making, shoe making and top making. One would think she was the Fairy of Fashion.

Her friends and teachers tried to pry her away from her fashion designing. They took her magic away but she did everything manually, working day and night, trying to get everything done by hand. They took her supplies away but that left her with her magic. Her supplies _and _magic were taken away but she sneaked into her friend Nova's room and used the supplies that she had.

So the Winx Club had came up with a plan. Their plan was to let _her_ decide to take a break from fashion. To do that, they needed the aid of her boyfriend, Brandon.

_Knock, knock, knock_. "Come in!" Stella huffed. It was a distraction. _Anything _served as a distraction when she was trying to sew the skirt on to the bodice of her new flower petal dress.

Brandon opened the door and slipped inside. "Hey, Stell." Brandon greeted. He had his bag with him.

"Hello, snookums." She said irritably with a frown.

"Hey, do you mind if I sit and read my new book in your room?" He asked her with a smirk.

"Uh..." Stella pushed the pedal of her sewing machine with her foot. Her thread was running out; she would need to fill up again soon.

"Stella? Can I?" Brandon asked again.

"OK, OK! Just read quietly!" She gave in to her boyfriend. Brandon just smirked.

He set himself on her bed, resting his weight onto his right forearm and took his book out of his bag. He held it open on the bed. As he closed his bag, he made sure that it fell flat on the ground with a thump. "Sorry! Sorry, Stella!"

"It's OK, Brandon." Stella sighed exasperatedly. She very nearly sewed her finger to the cloth when Brandon's bag fell.

The room fell silent, apart from Stella's sewing machine whirring away. She poked her tongue out, concentrating as hard as she could. And then... _snap_! Her white thread had broken, just as she was going to sew up the last stitch. "Nooo! No, no, no, no, no!" Her hands went up to her head on instinct. She gave her hair a yank, pulling out a fistful of long, blonde locks. She shrieked.

Brandon looked up from his book. "Stella? Are you OK?" He asked.

"I'm fine!" She said curtly. Brandon jumped.

"Sorry, Stella. I was just asking." He replied. He wanted to make her feel bad for offending him so she'd stop sewing and apologise. But nothing. Just more frustrated growls.

Stella threw her hair in the bin. She reached for her sewing box and picked up her white thread. Gritting her teeth, she unpicked the stitches and threaded her needle. Again, the machine blasted into life.

After about five minutes of sewing, the bodice and the skirt of the dress were joined together. "Ah." Stella breathed. "Done at last!" She held up the dress and nodded. She was satisfied with the outcome. "Brandon, what do you think?" She asked.

Without lifting his head, Brandon said, "Nice, Stel." _This is it_, he thought, _now she'll have a go at me and forget her sewing_. But no, she started putting her newly made dress in a polythene bag.

Plain distraction wasn't working. Endless questions weren't working. Time for plan C.

"_The Babysitters Club_." Brandon read aloud. This book was new to him but Bloom and the Winx Club had told him that this particular series was one of her favourites. "_I'm proud to say it was totally my idea, even though the four of us worked it out together._" He looked up from the book to see her eagerly collecting material for her next dress.

"_'Us' is Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill and me - Kristy Thomas._" Again, Brandon looked up and saw her drawing on a pad of paper. "_I got the idea on the first Tuesday afternoon of seventh grade. It was a very hot day. It was so hot that in my unair-conditioned school, Stoneybrook Middle School, the teachers had opened every single window and door and turned off all the lights._"

"Will you read quietly?!" She yelled at him.

"Sorry, Stella. I like reading out loud. I can understand the story more." He smirked.

"_My hair stuck damply to the back of my neck, and I wished I had an elastic band so I could pull it into a long ponytail. Bees flew into the classroom and droned around our heads, and Mr Redmont, our teacher, let us stop working to make fans out of construction paper._"

He looked up and saw Stella taking sneaky glances at him. He carried on reading, every now and then looking up and seeing Stella staring at him. That brought a triumphant smirk out of him and encouraged him to carry on reading.

He read for at least fifteen more minutes and suddenly everything worked according to plan.

Stella sighed heavily. She silently tidied up her needle, thread, material, pencils and paper. Gingerly, she sat on the edge of the bed. A smile was playing at the corner of his mouth as he read the words on the page.

Stella laid down next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "You have one sexy reading voice," she whispered into his ear. He turned his head to her and smirked.

"So you want to listen to me?" He asked. She took a deep breath and nodded.

"Yeah." She decided.

"Well then," his smile was mischievous and he laid on his back, pushing her head gently on to the other pillow. He rolled over, positioning his mouth at her ear. "Forget the sewing. Go back out to the world," he whispered seductively.

"But... I love my dress making!" She whispered back. "It's my life!"

"What about me, Stell? What about the Winx? Your life has potential. You need to discover it."

Suddenly, she grabbed his shirt, pulled him on top of her and crashed her lips onto his. She felt him smile against her lips. As they broke away, Brandon smiled.

"I knew you'd come back to me, Stell." He whispered.

"I'm sorry. For everything." She told him.

"It's OK, Stella. Seriously. You're only seventeen. You're just starting to discover your purpose." They went in for another kiss.

After they broke apart, Brandon picked up the book. "_The fans didn't do much except keep the bees away, but it was nice to take up ten minutes of geography making them..._"

Stella went out into the world for the first time in ages. She apologised to the Winx Club. And as for her sewing, she reduced it to one and a half hours a week.

And she never, _ever_, shut herself away again.

**A/N: The book that Brandon reads from his called 'Kristy's Great Idea', part one in the 'The Babysitters Club' series by Ann  
M. Martin.**


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